As I am now about to conclude, I must call back the mind of my reader, and having brought my argument to an end, refer to him the issue upon which he is to determine. Either Jesus Christ is one with the Father, God, or he is not; either the Holy Ghost is one with the Father and the Son, God, or he is not. -On fuppofing that the negative side of this dilemma can be afsfumed, (and for argument's fake it must be supposed, however irksome) a consequence ensues, horrible to thought. The God of peace becomes a firebrand of contention; tenfold confufion proceeds from God, "who is not the author of confufion;" the Spirit of truth is a lyar; the simple and guileless zeal of the apostle, is crafty and designing duplicity; the wisdom of the omniscient, folly, beneath the foolishness of men; and the revelation of the God of truth, from end to end, fcarce the word of designing falsehood, it must have proceeded from a dupe to his own artifices. I shudder while I write: but it is acknowledged that the fcriptures are the word of God, and the application of this defcription to them I will leave with men who can perfift in the denial of this great mystery: Whereas, on the other hand, three persons and one God being acknowledged, a fact is established concerning the things of God, incomprehensible to us, who have not fpiritual things to compare with spiritual, and which therefore, though it may transcend, can never contradict our reafon. Our belief, which is all that is required, may be yielded to the evidence of the fact without any violence offered to our understanding; and therefore, however incomprehenfible the object of the testimony may be, there can be no difficulty in making the affirmative, which does not equally attend upon pronouncing the negative negative of the proposition, and one of the two we are under an absolute neceffity of adopting. In whatfoever God acts, he must condescend. The whole extent of created nature bears to him but a like proportion as an atom; he is equally the God of a fraction as of the universe; and a fraction is as commenfurate to his infinity as the universe. But his love is infinite, and we have been the object of it, an object as obfervable by him as all worlds; for, little as we are, we bear the fame proportion to him. Let us then lay afide that pride, which, in the pretence of humility, withdraws mankind from the eye of his Maker; from that microscopick eye, by which even the hairs of our head are numbered; that equal and all-pervading eye, which as accurately fees and marks the fall of a sparrow, as the crush of worlds. When we thus confider him, doubts will vanish; we shall fee that we may possibly be within his contemplation, the objects of his favour; we shall acquiefce in a revelation of the benefits he has conferred upon us, and acknowledge that we have been the objects of his favour; our ignorance shall be diffipated, our pride deposed; and reason (rightly fo called) assuming her proper dignity, conduct us with certainty fo far as her own prescribed boundaries extend; instruct us where to pause; teach us the limits of our own faculties, and the illimitable extent of our Maker's; put an end to idle speculation; point out God as our revealed Benefactor, not the subject of our inquifitive curiosity; dictate confidence and hope in him; and make us, because he has revealed it, "to acknowledge the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Chrift." FINIS. |